


corviform

by chasingpatterns



Series: #post your drafts 2017 [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M, Mentions of The Fire™, Minor Character Death, Some ableist language, another origin story fic because we definitely needed more (we didn't) (i'm sorry)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-26 03:03:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9859244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasingpatterns/pseuds/chasingpatterns
Summary: Mick grew as skinny as a scarecrow and twice as unyielding. But crows? Crows are smart.





	

Mick’s older brothers loved fireworks. At least, that’s what they said, even if it was really the feeling that they were doing something naughty. Of course, fireworks weren’t allowed in the house – good Mrs. Rory would never allow such destructive materials in her pristine household. The Rory brothers took to the yard. Little Mick watched as the fuse went, barely ran away in time, and nearly blew his eyebrows off on several occasions. His brothers covered their ears when the explosions went off, but Mick was satisfied to watch the bright crackle of the little reaction of heat and light. 

(His brothers found out it was easy, so, so easy, to blame it on little Mick, who was just old enough to buy dollar firecrackers from the neighborhood boys with cars they took into town. His brothers figured out that if they left him with a book of matches, he’d stay in place long enough to get caught by their father, who didn’t care about his burnt fingers and fell for his brothers’ lies. But Mick would chase the fire every time.)

No one wanted to talk about it. His mom and dad didn’t wanna send him to see a shrink. Shrinks meant he’s crazy. Mick’s not crazy, his mother said, while clutching him to her chest, Mick himself facing his father impassive and frozen as children do. He’s young. He could be fighting, like Alf was, she said. Could’ve been worse. So the boy likes firecrackers.

They took away the firecrackers. Mick found something better.

Lighter fluid came in large supply. No one even missed it when Mick took a splash or two. Clumsy hands meant he sometimes got it on his clothes until Mick got steady and sure in his grip. His fingers were deft from tricky matches and sticking lighters. He picked up skills he shouldn’t have, but did anyways. He fell in love with the heat and the way the fire danced and how if he kept at it, the after image swayed in his eyes even after the flame’s disappeared. His brothers had to drag him back for dinner because he hadn’t heard their yelling in his watching.

(As a baby, they’d thought he went deaf for a moment, on fourth of July. A fireworks show they did every year in the biggest park in the city caused every baby one by one to go up in shrill cries, save for Mick. All he did was turn his wide eyed gaze towards the sky. After the initial scare, his mother found it adorable. His father called it from the get-go – their son was a freak.)

Mick grew as skinny as a scarecrow and twice as unyielding in his pubescent years, and was known for starting fires all over town. Small ones, hay bales and dry patches in the woods going up in smoke at his most rambunctious. Despite that, it’s no wonder, people said, when the barn where his brothers first lit the flame went up. It’s no wonder, people said, when the nice pristine house his mother loved so much burned easier than bone dry straw. It’s no wonder, people said, that little Mick Rory is found staring impassively at his family’s home as it burned, as flames overtook the house, with his family burned up with it inside.

It’s no wonder, people said, all the way up to juvie.

Mick stopped listening a long time ago. He was more burns than kid. Not near as much as he wanted – he wanted the flames to take him and mark him forever like some of the boys coveted tattoos. Mick was the weird one in here again. He didn’t care. He still watched the flame but he watched it lick at his skin and focused on his nerves screaming at him instead of his mind.

(They’re dead ‘cause Mick couldn’t handle himself. ‘Cause he’s a freak. ‘Cause his mother coddled him too much and he’s crazy. Crazy as shit. This is his fault.)

A kid shoved past him and he looked up to see he’d fashioned a shiv. He wasn’t going anywhere near that. He considered starting up the lighter he stole again before he heard a strained cry. Yelling. Mouthing off. Someone getting the shit beat out of them.

Well. They couldn’t think Mick’s just gonna let some kid shove past him. And maybe he would help this kid too.

(Mick’s hands were swift and steady. His strength, even if it didn’t show, was from years of hauling and pushing and digging, was an experience his muscles remembered and would until he was old, old, old. Fire built the rest. His swiftness. His potential. One day, he’d fill out his frame, but for now his too-tall skinny ass would have to do. And it did.)

“Don’t die.” It was the same way someone might’ve said “stay there” or “here’s a pen.” This kid pretty much looked like the tiniest kid in the world, a good foot and some change shorter than Mick was. Funny enough, he looked like he still had some fight in him despite the way the blood poured out. Mick threw the kid’s arm over his shoulders for the illusion that he was helping him along even though with his lack of strength and their difference in height, kid’s toes basically glided across the tile.

When he dumped him off to get treated, Mick realized, belatedly, that he set himself up to keep looking after this one’s ass as long as he was here. Well, fuck.

Turned out the kid bruised like his skin was paper. Mick came out with his own bumps and bruises, after all it was him against a crew and while he held his own, he couldn’t come out unscathed; but this kid got the brunt of it. Despite everything, he wore the shiners like they weren’t even there. Every once in awhile, Mick would notice him curling in on one side, where the shiv pierced his skin, but barely. If he didn’t know it was there he probably wouldn’t have noticed. The kid’s weird, for sure, but Mick didn’t care. He was that weird kind of interesting he doesn’t mind.

(Mick had a particular way of seeing things. Like everything and nothing. When to bust in with his words or his fists. Thing was, he liked the second one better.)

The kid kept eying him warily like he expected him to turn around any second and finish the job. Maybe studying Mick too. One day, Mick stared right back. The kid furrowed his brows, looked down at his hands, and Mick thought that was the end of it. Then the kid made his way over.

“Why haven’t you asked me to pay you back yet?” Ah.

“Dunno.”

“Don’t you want something from me?”

Mick shrugged. Stared. That same impassive stare people hated. The kid stared back, undeterred. Like it or not, his face betrayed him and painted surprise across it.

“What do you want from me?” He repeated. Mick gave it some thought.

“Brownies here ain’t so bad. Extra next week.”

It was evident that wasn’t what he was expecting.

“I can get you something better than a brownie.”

Now, was it just him, or did he look offended that all he wanted in exchange for his life is a brownie? Mick adjusted in his seat, fingers splayed across the table like they did in the movies when they’re making a deal.

“Only get one a month. Rest of the food here is garbage. I want two.”

He still looked at him all squinty eyed and skeptic, caught between baffled and distraught, before he nodded slowly. Mick told him to go away.

The next week Mick got as many brownies as could fit into a napkin dumped in his lap a day before brownie day. The look on his face read that he did it more out of spite than gratefulness. Actually, come to think of it, that was the kid’s entire presence here, let alone with him. Mick said nothing as he fished one out and took a bite. The kid didn’t leave.

“You were expecting me to say lighter.” He said after a moment, as he licked chocolate off his teeth. Kid said nothing. “Yeah, well I can handle getting my own fire around here.” He still stared, sized him up, maybe. “That’s it. You’re free.”

“Snart.” A beat. Mick realized it’s a name. Unfortunate one at that.

“Rory.”

Snart actually wouldn’t stop getting himself into trouble. He had this cocky sort of drawl to a mid-pubescent voice and sass too big for a kid that small and Mick… kept saving him. It felt a lot like when the neighbor made friends with a crow and ended up with random shit in return for years. All this for Mick not letting him die on what was a near regular occasion. Mick had a fight with half the center by then, and loved it. The first (second?) “gift” was another food, candy swiped from the teachers. It kept going after that. Mick had a barrette he could play with and flick between his fingers with a satisfying snap. He also got a nice pen that wouldn’t run out after a half page of writing, even if Mick wasn’t one for doing the school work. Some of them didn’t work. Early, Mick refused the flash bangs and the cigs. Reputation didn’t seem to peg Mick right. He imagined people were spinning stories. To his crow’s credit, he learned incredibly quickly.

Mick should’ve told him to stop getting into fights. He didn’t. Mick didn’t like saving people, but he supposed he liked the kid. Snart. 

They didn’t talk. They weren’t friends. Mick was rowdy and knew enough jokes where he wasn’t completely ostracized, and Snart’s crowd seemed to change every other week, only a select few staying. Mick wasn’t his first pick, but Snart always came back to him anyways. He didn’t question it, just knew when to step in during a fight, when Snart’s punches weren’t doing anything and he began to wobble. Then Snart would approach him a few days later with his gift, and leave. So no, Snart didn’t pick him first. But he always picked Mick.

Mick approached him one day, said nothing, just leaned against the wall where Snart’s sparse crew hung out, and flicked a lighter on and watched it. A kid tried to snarl at him, but Snart cut him off quickly. It went on like that for awhile, before Mick found a shiny metal lighter on his bunk. He’d refused lighters from Snart until then, but he showed up the next day, sat beside him, and flicked it on.

Snart became Leonard that week.

It was hard to make him laugh, and when he did it was always a guarded quiet chuckle like he didn’t want him to hear. Sometimes when teachers got loud, Leonard started to harden up. Mick got loud too, of course, but Leonard didn’t seem to find his loud as offensive. They fought a lot, sometimes as practice so Leonard didn’t get his ass handed to him after ten minutes and sometimes for real. But they stuck by each other’s side.

Leonard had a pretty smile, even if Mick didn’t see it much. Could count the amount of times he’d seen it on his fingers up until the last weeks of Snart’s sentence. The biggest he’d ever seen it was him talking about his sister, after having gotten carried away. Mick didn’t know how he could go on so long about a literal infant, but it didn’t stop him. Mick bit his tongue.

“She came out perfect,” Leonard gushed. “Seven and a half pounds and really healthy. She’s not collicky at all, even with strangers. ‘Cept when my dad holds her, then she’s wailing.” Leonard looked particularly proud of that fact, a flash of worry tacked onto the end. He continued. “She’s really strong for a baby, you know. Even before she was born, used to kick around all the time. Once, Danger Zone started playing on the radio, and she started kicking up a storm in her mom’s uterus.”

Even Mick had to laugh at that. Leonard startled at the noise, but cautiously continued to laugh anyways.

“I killed my siblings,” Mick said, unflinching. Leonard looked too neutral then. “In a fire. Lit up the parlor room and got distracted looking at the flames. Shrink says I’m messed up.”

“It was an accident,” Leonard asked slowly. Mick blinked, and nodded once.

“What were they like?”

“Well, my oldest brother, Alf? Could throw a playing card like a ninja in those Chuck Norris movies. He taught me one time.”

Leonard pulled a deck of cards from his pockets, which always seemed to have random shit in them. Mick figured he just stole things to see if he could. Good quality deck, too, didn’t have frayed edges or creases. Custom. Had ladies in bikinis on it, and he knew it belonged to Johnson, a teacher who smelled like cigarette smoke and always kept his hands in his pockets.

“Show me.”

Leonard became Len. 

Funny timing, though. Len was gonna leave soon and Mick was looking at a lifetime of in and out playing with juvie until they could officially shuffle him into an adult prison. He was supposed to leave ages ago, but with all the fights he kept getting into and currency being time as far as the higher ups were concerned, Mick was spending his seventeenth birthday in this hell. And he certainly didn’t expect Len to write when he was out. 

(Anyways, Mick didn’t want to get any hopes up. Hopes weren’t meant for him. People didn’t expect him to hope for anything other than to burn, but sometimes things made it past the flames. Mick may have been dangerous, but he didn’t dare flirt with the idea that Len would dare stick around.)

Thing was, about crows, they’re pests. Mick found he didn’t mind.

(The thing about crows — they always came back.)

**Author's Note:**

> AKA the 'baby Rory was really tiny in the show' fic. It's technically... not finished. Hence the series. Hope you enjoyed it anyways!
> 
> [tumblr.](http://chasingpatterns.tumblr.com/)


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